New Delhi: The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has approached Interpol for the location of a foreign-based handler suspected of coordinating the explosion at the Dedicated Freight Corridor earlier this year in Punjab, ThePrint has learnt.
For this purpose, the agency has asked the CBI to help in getting a Blue Notice issued against the handler, identified as Jujhar Singh and allegedly linked to the terrorist outfit Khalistan Zindabad Force (KZF), sources further said.
Interpol, however, is yet to issue the notice, which helps member nations gather information on an individual’s identity, location or overall criminal activities across all 194 member nations.
The NIA had taken over the probe into the botched sabotage of the freight corridor connecting Punjab with other parts of the country in June this year, a couple of months after the incident between Shambhu and Rajpur railway stations on the night of 27 April. This had sparked concerns among officials due to the emergence of a pattern of attacks against the Dedicated Freight Corridor in the state, with the one in April following a similar botched sabotage attempt made on the freight corridor at Sirhind in Fatehgarh Sahib district on January 23.
The state accounts for a major portion of one of the two major corridors on the Dedicated Freight Corridor, spanning more than 1,300 km between Ludhiana and Son Nagar in Bihar.
The explosion had damaged the underlying cement support beneath the railway line as well as leaving alleged saboteur Jagroop Singh dead in the explosion. According to a probe by the Punjab Police—the first in the case—Singh was killed in the premature explosion even before he could assemble the detonator properly.
“It has come during the probe that Jujhar Singh was actively funding the operation of Jagroop Singh, the saboteur behind the explosion, and the payment had been channelised as late as a day before the explosion and botched-up operation,” an official privy to the probe said. “He was also in touch with Pardeep Singh from Mansa who played a key role in coordinating between foreign-based handlers such as Jujhar Singh and Jagroop Singh,” the official said.
ThePrint had earlier reported that Jujhar Singh was in constant touch with Jagroop Singh on an encrypted platform called Threema, and was guiding him in his movements.
At the beginning of the probe, the police arrested Pardeep Singh Khalsa, Kulwinder Singh alias Bagga, Satnam Singh alias Satta and Gurpreet Singh alias Gopi—all from Punjab— as accused who hatched the conspiracy and carried out the explosion. Initially, the police had identified Pardeep Singh as the mastermind of the entire plot, with the Patiala Range Deputy Inspector General of Police (DIG) Kuldeep Singh Chahal identifying him as a key node between the foreign-based handlers and operatives such as Jagroop Singh on the ground.
The senior officers also said that Pardeep formed a radical organisation called ‘Chalda Vaheer Chakarwarti, Attariye’. From their possession, the police have recovered a hand grenade, two pistols and sophisticated communication devices used in detonations as well as laptops used for communicating with Malaysia-based handlers.
After the Punjab Police busted the module behind the explosion, Punjab Police chief Gaurav Yadav had named Jujhar Singh, a resident of Amritsar, as the principal node behind the module. He had also named US-based Surinder Singh Thikriwal and the Pakistan-based chief of the banned outfit Khalistan Zindabad Force, Ranjeet Singh Neeta, as behind the explosion.
In further course of the probe, the Punjab Police found that Jagroop Singh, a Nihang Sikh from Panjwar Khurd village in Tarn Taran, had made several trips to Malaysia and Dubai over a period of eight years, between 2014 and 2022. The module that carried out the explosion at the railway track had been working since 2021, when Jagroop had gone to Malaysia and met Jujhar and other handlers, ThePrint had earlier reported.
A couple of months after the explosion, the Punjab Police arrested two more accused in the case, who were deported by the Malaysian authorities after their names surfaced in the probe. Upon their deportation, the accused duo, identified as Gurwinder Singh and Manjeet Singh were arrested by the Punjab Police before their custody was handed over to the NIA which took over the case.
(Edited by Nardeep Singh Dahiya)
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